


The (happy) End!verse

by belovedstill



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2014!Destiel, Castiel and Drug Use, Drug Use, End!verse, Episode: s05e04 The End, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Shotgunning, Tattoos, happy end!verse, killing for fun, parts are not always exactly what the prompt is about, so nobody but the Croatoans die, the story actually takes place before the episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:46:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedstill/pseuds/belovedstill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>8 really short parts to make the end!verse a bit happier and easier to endure (based on this post: http://keepyourguttersoul.tumblr.com/post/66795453509/some-end-verse-fluff-thoughts-because-fight-me)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to wonderful [Reem](http://www.gracelesscas.tumblr.com)  
> in thanks of helping and always being there when people need to talk to somebody (anon or not). Also, I know that you have a weak spot for end!verse, so...
> 
> \+ a huge "thank you" to [Izzy](http://www.keepyourguttersoul.tumblr.com),  
> for her beautiful mind that came up with the thoughts.
> 
> written and posted by [Basia](http://www.casinthongs.tumblr.com)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 1: Cas grabs Dean’s ass all the goddamn time, especially when he’s giving an important rallying speech or something

"Alright, team," Dean called in his rough, leader voice, and all the talks quietened down immediately. They had a difficult trip to go to with a goal even bigger: they were going to search for the way to save Sam. Dean had a map sprawled on the table in front of him, centred on Michigan and reaching all the states surrounding it. The name Detroit was circled with red marker a couple of times — somebody had drawn a pair of devil thorns connected to it along with a red fork-like tail. Must have been one of the boys who’d drunk too much the other night and thought it would be a funny joke.

The plan was simple — they were going to split up and go separate ways: he, Cas and Jack to Indiana and Illinois, Mike, Ian and Rob to Ohio and Kentucky, and the rest of the men would part and go East and West. Dean had a vague idea where they could find help, but he wasn’t sure which of the strategic places would be the lucky one.

He just leaned against the table, reaching to the top of the map to point something for Tori, and the people around him moved closer to look, too, when he felt a hand on his ass, squeezing it for a moment before disappearing with an inaudible slap. The gesture made him jerk and straighten, and he looked over his shoulder. Honestly, he didn’t even have to search for the guilty man. He knew very well who would never lose any opportunity to grab him. Sure enough, his eyes fell onto Cas’s face, which was crooked in a playful and provocative smirk.

"Dean? You’re alright?" asked one of his comrades, at what the Winchester nodded and slowly returned to explaining the strategy. Castiel’s hand covered his backside again as he talked, but this time he never stopped weaving the plans. His voice didn’t even waver when Cas squeezed harder and harder.

After the meeting, when everybody else left his tent, Castiel ended up to be the one who squirmed and trembled with his ass getting just a little more of Dean’s attention.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 2: That one time Chuck walked in on them going at it. That one time turns into those 30 times and Chuck is like you guYS and they’re all “you’re a prophet, can’t u predict when and where we’ll be” and Chuck storms off

Everybody knew what Dean and Cas were doing when they were together. Or – they thought they knew. It wasn’t hard to guess why Dean would leave the ex-angel’s tent looking so relaxed, or why sometimes after the session Castiel seemed to have trouble with walking.

Everybody knew and yet nobody even managed to grasp the concept of their relationship. They weren’t each other’s casual fuck – people from the camp were, though, pretty eager for something like that.

But not them. They were friends.

Dean visiting Castiel’s tent didn’t always end up with them both naked and buried in countless pillows, panting after the exertion they’d just go through. Quite often they would simply settle on repeating the strategy for the next trip or thinking on the new one. They’d snort together with laughter at mentions of Chuck and his tissues and toilet paper stores. Dean would pretend he was choking on the smoke from Castiel’s joint and wasn’t noticing how many pills the man sometimes swallowed, one by one.

But, on the other side, if them being in Castiel’s tent didn’t necessarily mean them having sex, then them being outside of it didn’t mean they were not having it.

There was one person who learned it the hard way. Chuck had never been even slightly interested in Dean and Cas’s activities. One day he was simply carrying the bathing essentials he had managed to find to the storage when the door nearby him opened and both the men, nude from waist down, plunged down to the ground.

“‘the Hell, Cas,” Dean mumbled, landing on the ex-angel, making him yelp and lose his breath. “You said the door was closed!”

"It was closed before you _opened_ it,” Castiel growled in response, grunting under his friend’s weight. He squirmed for a moment, struggling a little before giving up. “Get off!”

The Winchester laughed. "Gladly," he murmured, meaning something entirely different, but eventually he did get up from the ground, pulling his pants up.

Chuck’s eyes were wide with surprise, his mouth opening and closing before he found any words worth being spoken. “Guys,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “Ew… Keep it private.”

Castiel finally managed to move from the ground, too. The only difference between him and Dean was the pair of pants still pooling down around his ankles. “What,” he muttered, tilting his head with an amused smirk. “You weren’t expecting us?”

The look on Chuck’s face told them more than enough. They didn’t manage to throw another remark before the man disappeared in the storage.

Dean watched after him, buried in his thoughts, chuckling. It would be fun to tease the prophet about the occurrence, he imagined.

Apparently, Cas thought on a very similar level. “The pink looked good on his face,” the junkie mused, making his tone sound almost impossibly serious. It simply didn’t match his posture and the way he looked with his pants still down his legs.

The hunter snorted. “You wanna play hide and seek with him, then? Really?”

Castiel gave the other man a provocative look, pulling his pants up. “Don’t tell me that you don’t.”

Dean grinned only and after a moment he pulled Cas back into the small room they had just fallen out of, this time locking the door.

Chuck might or might have not heard them both on his way back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 3: They raid a grocery store and Cas shows up high and makes Dean push him around in a grocery cart

"I can’t believe you actually brought him with us," Chuck mumbled, shaking his head with disbelief as he watched Castiel sitting happily in the grocery cart. The man had tried to take the baby seat in it, but when he realised there was no chance he would fit, he’d decided to just sit on his heels, holding tight to the front of the small vehicle.

"Come on, it’ll do him good to leave the tent once in a while to do something more than kill off a couple of Croats," Dean defended, frowning at his friend. He had a feeling Chuck was only panicking that he and Cas would start anything in the middle of the grocery shop. ”Why don’t you take a basket and grab everything we need?”

The prophet sighed only and saluted, casting one last glance at the ex-angel before disappearing between the isles.

Dean snorted softly when the man left and started to push the cart. Castiel wasn’t the lightest person on Earth, but thanks to his frugal diet and exercises (Dean wasn’t the only one at the reserve that had seen Cas jog around the camp early in the mornings) he wasn’t the heaviest one, either. They passed a couple of isles before any of them spoke again.

"Dean?" Castiel asked, pulling the hunter out of his thoughts. When he looked down at the man he realised that blue eyes must have stared at him for some time now.

"Yeah?"

"Where did Chuck go?"

Dean blinked at him and glanced around before shrugging. “Shopping. He’s still obsessed with these visions of his about losing any kind of toilet paper.”

Cas nodded in understanding, humming under his breath. “But you have the money,” he noticed.

"Yeah, I do. So does he," the hunter responded a little absently, looking around at the shelves for things that they needed at the camp. Newspapers? No… Cosmetics, shampoos, soaps — they had it all, there was no need to buy more. School accessories—

"Will you buy me a chocolate?"

"What?" Dean stopped the cart, turning his eyes to the man sitting in it. Had he heard correctly? He shook his head. "No, Cas." They didn’t need chocolate. The money they had was supposed to be spent on essentials.

Castiel tilted his head to the side, frowning. He did this thing with his eyes that he used to when he’d been still an angel, squinting in confusion. “A lollipop?”

The Winchester sighed. Castiel was high, of course he’d feel like having a candy. “Maybe,” he muttered with a heavy sigh, and when the other man grinned and turned in the direction of the ride again, he allowed himself for a fond smile.

Chuck was nowhere in sight, so Dean simply decided to push his friend some more, passing different multi-coloured isles. Oh, they even had a 50% off for all pies—

"Dean!" Cas called suddenly, freezing in his position. His fists clenched on the side-rails of the cart as he stared at something in front of him.

The hunter looked around in alarm. “What is it, what’s wrong?” he questioned quickly, readying his hand to reach for the gun hidden safely behind the skirt of his jacket.

The ex-angel threw his hand forward, pointing in the direction of an empty alley. “Move! Go faster!” he yelled excitedly. The cart moved, pushed by the Winchester again, making Castiel laugh. “Faster!”

Dean glanced around quickly to make sure they wouldn’t bump into anybody. As long as Cas forgot about the sweets, he was going to do anything. He quickened his steps, only to start a slow jog. It didn’t take long for it to turn into a run.

Castiel slowly let go of the cart and outstretched his arms as far sideways as he was able to. He could feel the air pressure, but it wasn’t just air for him. It was wind; wind that caressed his body as they rushed through the alley, echoes of the colourful rainbows passing them. “Dean, I’m flying!” Cas called excitedly as the isles steadily crept out of his vision, replaced by clouds and birds, and the sun, so bright, too bright for him to look at. When he closed his eyes he could smell flowers from a meadow nearby, and the fresh, vernal green grass. Waters of two streams were rustling somewhere not far away and Cas smiled and laughed, and couldn’t stop himself from doing so because he had always, always wanted to take Dean to a place like that and now they were there, finally they were there!

Dean smiled when the man simply fell back against the back of the cart, chuckling from time to time. Eventually, when he slowed down his steps, Chuck finally returned to them. “Do you have everything we need?” the hunter asked, looking at the filled basket. When the prophet nodded, Dean spared one last glance at Cas before grabbing a bar of chocolate from a shelf nearby. “Add this to the shopping,” he decided softly. “We’ll wait for you outside.”

Chuck lifted his eyebrow at the piece of candy, clearly confused, but shrugged his shoulder and headed off to the registers without a word of complaint. Honestly, who would understand Dean and his high angel…


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 4: Legolas and Gimli-style how many Croats can you kill off contests

_Fourteen, fifte— sixteen, seventeen…_

It was so much easier when he was high, Castiel thought, aiming and shooting, counting the dead bodies of Croats falling to the ground. He and Dean had a deal - whoever shot off more of the turned, would have three things to require from the defeated. They both knew not to ask for stuff the other was uncomfortable with, so it was all okay. They trusted each other like that.

_Twenty, twenty-one… Twenty-three…_

"Thirty!" Dean called, and when the echo of his voice stopped being carried around, a loud gunshot tore through the air. "Thirty-two!"

Castiel’s eyes widened in surprise and he barely managed to save himself by gunning his _twenty-fourth_ down. “You’re cheating!” he yelled at the Winchester, pulling out his faithful companion - his beloved angel blade. “There’s absolutely no way you would—”

"Thirty-four!"

"Dean, for Heaven’s sake!"

The hunter laughed out loud, using his two guns to shoot down another pair of Croatoans. With time, defending themselves from getting infected and then turned had become a boring routine. Dean adapted the idea of competing in such a manner from a movie of some sorts - if Castiel had understood correctly. “Not my fault you suck at it!”

The blue-eyed man growled, moving to the place he knew Dean was. “ _You_ suck at it!” he shouted. “You can’t even play fair!”

"Fair is for losers!" Dean called back, before giving out a triumphal shout. "Forty!"

That was it - when Dean crossed the magical _Fifty_ , Castiel began to prepare himself to swallow back his dignity and make three of the fearless leader’s wishes come true.

Fortunately, all three of them came true later in the evening and involved something pink and satiny that the Winchester forbade him to talk about to anyone. Ever.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 5: s h o t g u n n i n g

The moment Castiel heard another of Dean’s heavy sighs, he rolled his eyes. “Care to share a piece of your mind?” he asked only, not moving from the edge of his pillowed nest. He put one of the joints he owned between his lips and carefully lit it up, throwing the pack with the rest aside.

Dean watched the scene from where he was lying with a hand under his head, completely naked and covered in a layer of quickly cooling sweat. His heart was only starting to even its beating out. “I just don’t get it,” he confessed.

With an inhale, Castiel closed his eyes and let his head instinctively roll back. When he breathed out, he felt any tension left in his body move far, far away from him. Dean’s look was warm on Cas’s skin, and he knew exactly when the green eyes followed the thin trail of smoke that began to dance lazily up in the air. “What don’t you understand?” he asked slowly, rolling his shoulders back with a pleased groan. The substance spread in his body, making him feel so much better.

"Why do you do this?" Dean asked, propping his head on his hand. "Why do you smoke this shit?"

Castiel snorted and shook his head at the question. “This _shit_ ,” he said, lifting the joint slightly, slowly rolling it between his thumb and middle finger, “relaxes me.”

"Relaxes you."

He shrugged his shoulder and gave Dean a nod before taking another drag. “Makes me forget of it all, how fucked up all of it is sometimes,” Cas added when another dose of smoke flew up above their heads. “How unfair it is for innocent people to get infected, turned and eventually killed.”

Dean sighed again, but this time Castiel knew it wasn’t a sign of a bored ‘You’re exaggerating’ approaching. The Winchester was agreeing with him. They had killed so many infected ones that week, making it fun and competition even, but every one of them knew that even the Croats had been human once.

The ex-angel sat like that for a moment, before sighing himself and moving on his knees closer to Dean. “Here,” he offered, waiting for the other man to scoot up a bit. When the joint found itself between the leader’s lips, Cas smiled. He knew for a fact that it wasn’t the first time Dean baked. The smoke that slowly, almost reluctantly, wept from the hunter’s mouth only confirmed it. “Better?”

"Ask me in a bit," Dean whispered, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the wall of pillows. At one point the stick vanished from between his fingers, but he didn’t care enough to look for it. Cas had more, they could always light up another. There was a soft, barely audible shift close to him, and a moment later a set of warm lips pressed against his own, making him smirk. They always ended up like that, eventually, kissing their touches away from each other’s bodies, almost as though to protect their caresses from other people’s wandering hands. Yeah, they were sleeping with other members of the Camp Chitaqua, but in the end, they always returned to one another.

Castiel hummed slowly, parting Dean’s lips with his tongue, slipping it into the other man’s mouth to brush against his teeth. It wasn’t what surprised Dean, no. What caught him off guard was the smoke all of a sudden seeping inside through the widened seam of his lips. Cas chuckled, letting go of the rest of the substance, making it disappear somewhere around them. “Okay?”

"Jesus, Cas," was everything that escaped the Winchester’s mouth before he took a drag of the joint and pulled Castiel closer, tangling his fingers in the dark hair. They breathed the drug together, sharing it between their lips.

And when it burnt down, they simply shared their air instead. Sometimes the other person was the best drug of them all.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 6: Dean finding something he thinks Cas would like while on the road and bringing it back to camp

It was the last building that they had to search through in the _Croatoan zone_. Sometimes they managed to find food, sometimes a roll or two of toilet paper, and sometimes Dean would stumble upon something as unessential and not needed like this.

He had found himself in a small room in the mostly destroyed apartment. The whole building was empty with no soul living among the walls - the family that used to live there must have become infected and turned, or… well, eaten. There was _nothing_ that would surprise Dean at this point.

The room must have belonged to a girl, if the scratched pale pink walls indicated anything. On the bed, just by the wall, a doll was sitting, the kind that was way creepy with its eyes than without them. The air was dusty and smelling of something rotting - the scent wasn’t anything new in the zone, though.

There was nothing worth his time in the room, so he turned around and when he was just about to leave, a wooden board under his foot croaked. If he hadn’t been a Winchester, he would probably just ignore it, but he knew too well what it meant. Back in the old days he and Sammy used to make little hidings for the things they treasured the most, just for the kicks of their Dad never knowing about them. Good old times.

Dean was right, he realised with a smirk as he pulled the board out of its place and removed a couple more of them. The hiding wasn’t big - the only things inside were a piggy-bank (more than half full with money) and a wad of thick weird papery things. He put the piggy-bank into his bag, not wanting to smash it in here - the place was full of Croats, and any louder sound could bring them out from wherever the Hell they were staying. Dean grabbed the papers and stood up, glancing around the room once again. He wouldn’t need anything more from there, that was sure. What would he do about the papers, though?

He got his answer the moment he looked through them, unable to stop a smile from crawling onto his lips. The papers weren’t just any papers. They were those temporary tattoos that one could get on himself with just a bit of water. Dean knew very well who would be happy to own such a thing.

The tattoos didn’t feel heavy in his bag at all as he rummaged through the rest of the building before returning to his team, ready to head back. He had this little something for Cas that he planned on giving him on their meeting later in the evening and he really, really couldn’t wait to see his reaction.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 7: Giving each other tattoos

Castiel was pretty high when Dean walked into his tent. It wasn’t an unusual thing when it came to their meetings. When Dean had once asked him why he kept himself in such a state every time they were supposed to be intimate, Castiel laughed. “Intimate…” he had said. “It helps with getting my shit together when it comes to bye-bye.”

Dumb man, he had thought Dean wouldn’t come back the next time.

He always came back.

"Honey, I’m home," Dean announced jokingly when he was sure nobody would hear them.

"Darling, me, too," the other man replied, putting away the bottle of pills Chuck had delivered him earlier. Cas glanced up and grinned at the Winchester. "I hope you brought something pretty for me," he added, getting up.

Dean smiled back, meeting him halfway with a teasing brush of lips against lips and whispered “Always.”

He didn’t give Castiel the tattoos until two hours later, when they half lay, half sat against all the pillows the ex-angel owned. They were still short of breath after all the sex, and Dean could feel Cas’s heart beating against his chest where the man was leaning against him. Only then did he reach for his bag and pulled out the papers.

Castiel laughed the moment he realised what they were, and Dean was amazed that something so simple could cause excitement sparkle again in these unnaturally old eyes. Blue met green and the laughter softened steadily. “Put some on me,” Cas told him — didn’t ask, but _told_. They were beyond that point.

Dean answered with a smile and soon enough he had his friend lying down on his belly, presenting him a nice-looking backside. He chuckled and smacked the flesh, completely ignoring the loud yelp it caused.

"I’m in for love, not for violence," Castiel mumbled into his pillow, and if his ass hadn’t told something entirely different by the slinky shaking, perhaps Dean would believe him.

"Yeah, yeah," he murmured only, straddling the other man’s waist. Humming to himself, he reached for the the stack of papers "Which one do you want?"

Castiel didn’t even look at the tattoos, shrugging his shoulders. “Just pick any of them.”

The words had Dean grinning to himself as he looked through the tattoos. Yeah, they had definitely belonged to a girl. They were all pretty small - from really tiny to a size of his palm. Black-‘inked’ hearts, flowers, feathers and animals stared at him from the paper, and he really couldn’t decide. Even with such a fragile, temporary tattoo Dean wanted for it to mean something. An idea struck him when he removed the plastic wrap. Not waiting any longer, he tore the papers into smaller pieces, separating the tattoos and laying them with the drawings down on Castiel’s back, arms and shoulders. “You’re gonna love this one,” he sang in a low voice, wetting the torn paper and pressing it with a damp sponge one by one. The man underneath him started shifting curiously, trying to look back at what exactly Dean was doing, only to have his ass slapped playfully once again. “Don’t move,” Dean commanded, laughing.

So he didn’t.

When Dean finally removed all the pieces of paper — now blank, with the drawings stuck to Cas’s body — he moved away from him and helped him get up. The way Castiel rushed to the mirror in the corner of his tent made him snort with amusement.

 _He had wings again_ — it was the first thought that invaded Castiel’s mind when he saw the reflection of the tattoo in his mirror. Dean gave him wings, black ink-like substance covering the upper part of his back, arms and shoulders, tiny hearts, kitten heads and flowers creating countless feathers dancing upon his skin. The tightness in his chest reached his throat, and Castiel could feel himself quickly coming down from his high. “I’m no angel,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

"You know it’s bullshit," Dean blurted. Stepping closer, he reached for his friend’s hand and pulled him away from the mirror, right to the softness of the pile of comfortable pillows. They fell down onto it, Dean first, Cas following him right after. Strong arms wrapped around dried, tattoo covered skin. "Deep down, you never stopped being one."

That was where any of them stopped talking, simply lying like that and taking in the other one’s warmth.

And when the Winchester fell asleep, Castiel maybe — just maybe — put a tiny black heart-shaped tattoo on the outside of Dean’s palm.

And maybe — just maybe — he delighted in seeing Dean walking around the camp with it still visible for the next couple of days.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part 8: How sometimes at night or sunset Dean will slink into Cas’s tent and rest his head in his lap and Cas will just stroke his hair and not say anything snarky for awhile

Castiel didn’t even have to turn around when he heard the beading by the entrance to his tent move. Somebody walked in, but he knew very well who it was.

"Dean," he said quietly in acknowledgement of the leader’s arrival. Nobody answered. Instead of words, a couple of heavy steps reached his ears, becoming louder and louder, approaching closer until they stopped. Castiel expected a hand to touch his hair or shoulder, or anything at all which would indicate what the Winchester had in mind for the evening. Only when nothing like this happened, did he turn around and looked up.

Dean looked devastated. “There’s nothing I can do,” he whispered. All the bravado usually present on his face was gone, leaving no sign of the fearless leader that he had become.

"Nothing?"

"Sam can’t be saved," came the answer, along with a slow shook of head. "He’s too far gone."

Earlier in the week, Dean had taken a couple of people from the camp and gone to search for a final way to exile Lucifer from his brother. The trip had taken about four days, and the team had returned just a moment ago.

Dean wasn’t the crying type, Castiel knew, but in the moment he would truly prefer the man crying to looking so broken and helpless.

They never engaged in anything sexual that night, simply buried in each other’s arms and surrounded by hushed, whispered words.

Since the evening, Dean came back to his tent every following day, just when the sun set on the horizon, colouring the world with orange, red and pink. They never talked - it was an unspoken agreement between them, the time where Dean stopped being the fearless leader that the rest of the camp saw him as, and where Cas lost his usual bitter, stingy remarks. Castiel stopped getting high before their meetings - he began to understand that only because the man he loved had changed his posture, didn’t mean he’d changed his heart. In these moments, with them curled around each other, they were again the lost, righteous man ready to fight for anybody he loved and his angel who only for a moment forgot how to fly.


End file.
